Abstract The examination mechanism in Pakistan has many loopholes, the local benchmarking is entirely not existing, many Pakistani examiners are not trained in the application of rating tests accordingly the scale descriptors, due to this students do not get vivid feedback about their test performances. Therefore, this study is designed to facilitate and initiate the interest of the English language teachers in Pakistan to understand the importance of sound assessment and validation mechanisms, and their exposure regarding the construction of test items to assess the English language proficiency of Pakistani students at both the summative and formative levels. This study is carefully selected and proposed while keeping the most erroneous practices in Pakistani examination systems. Most of the English language teachers in Pakistan are entirely unfamiliar with scaling and testing procedures which play a crucial role in setting the pupil’s language proficiency targets. As a matter of fact, the Pakistani students lag behind in International tests, because they are not tuned to the highly mechanized examination systems. The primary focus of this study is to assess the test validity through the construct validity; content validity and criterion related validity of the test items. The obscurities faced by Pakistani students in acquiring English language proficiency are also assessed by the summative evaluation through local assessment screening tests likewise: NAT1&, NAT2. This study has also provided with sound recommendations in improving pupils’ proficiency in such local assessments and it also highlights test takers anticipated fallacies and fears regarding their test performances. Thus, this study emphasized the sound interrelation of the summative and formative benchmarking both at the institutional level as well as governmental level.

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Second language vocabulary acquisition is one of the most difficult and daunting tasks a language learner has to face. The last 30 years has seen an emergence in the importance of language learning strategies